Engagement Paper for Hybrid Format Film Meat
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Engagement Paper for Hybrid Format Film Meat A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Media Production University of Regina By Xin Shen Regina, Saskatchewan March, 2017 Copyright 2016: X. Shen i UNIVERSITY OF REGINA FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH SUPERVISORY AND EXAMINING COMMITTEE Xin Shen, candidate for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Media Production, has presented a thesis titled, Engagement Paper for Hybrid Format Film Meat, in an oral examination held on December 15, 2016. The following committee members have found the thesis acceptable in form and content, and that the candidate demonstrated satisfactory knowledge of the subject material. External Examiner: *Dr. Shannon Walsh, University of British Columbia Co-Supervisor: Prof. Gerald Saul, Department of Film Co-Supervisor: Prof. Mark Wihak, Department of Film Committee Member: Dr. Christine Ramsay, Department of Film Committee Member: **Dr. Christina Stojanova, Department of Film Chair of Defense: Dr. Troni Grande, Department of English *Via videoconference **Not present at defense Abstract After having suffered the pressure of being a single woman at the age of twenty-five when I was in China, I have made a hybrid format short film Meat to remember my personal experience as being a sheng nu (left-over woman). This engagement paper puts Meat into a theoretical, historical, and personal context. Through the personal-experience-based story, a sheng nu’s relationship with the society and her family will be explored, in an attempt to analyze the social, historical and political problems, faced by single Chinese women during this decade. The paper will also discuss how the creative choices behind the shooting, locations, actors, languages, props, and new technologies, combined with hybrid filmmaking, which includes animation, realist live-action and symbolic live-action, are used to build a complex portrait of young Chinese women today. i Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisors Gerald Saul and Mark Wihak as well as Sarah Abbott for all the guidance that they gave me during the research and writing of this thesis project. I would also like to thank Christina Stojanova and Christine Ramsay, my committee members, whose rich knowledge have helped to contextualize my research and make my ideas more critical and insightful. Finally, I would like to thank the University of Regina for support through Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research Graduate Teaching Assistantship (2014), Saskatchewan Innovation and Opportunity Graduate Scholarship (2014), Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research Graduate Scholarship (2015 Spring), Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research Graduate Teaching Assistantship (2015), Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research Graduate Scholarship (2015 Fall), Saskatchewan Innovation and Opportunity Graduate Scholarship, Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research Graduate Scholarship (2016 Spring), Saskatchewan Innovation and Opportunity Graduate Scholarship (2016). ii Dedication To my parents, Lian Yang and Xushu Shen, my husband, Yan Luo and my friend Jia Hou, who grew together with me, I thank you. iii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... ii Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... iv CHAPTER ONE: Introduction ...................................................................................................1 CHAPTER TWO: Methodology and Theory ............................................................................3 CHAPTER THREE: Contexts of Research Project .................................................................5 CHAPTER FOUR: Detailed Project Description ....................................................................13 4.1 Characters .......................................................................................................................14 4.2 Plot ..................................................................................................................................19 4.3 Conflict ...........................................................................................................................20 4.3.1 Gender Stereotypes and Conflicts ................................................................................21 4.3.2 The Subtexts underneath Conflicts ..............................................................................22 4.4 Actors ...............................................................................................................................24 4.5 Dialect ..............................................................................................................................28 4.6 Hybrid Aesthetics .............................................................................................................30 4.6.1 Animation Scene ...........................................................................................................30 4.6.2 Symbolism in Scenes ....................................................................................................33 4.6.3 Realist Live-action Scenes and the Cameras ................................................................37 CHAPTER FIVE: Conclusion ....................................................................................................41 WORKS CITED ..........................................................................................................................42 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................44 iv APPENDIX A ...............................................................................................................................49 APPENDIX B ...............................................................................................................................51 v CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION This paper discusses and contextualizes my ten minute short film entitled Meat, which I made to explore my conflicted feelings about sheng nu (leftover women) and to remember my trauma when I considered myself sheng nu at twenty-five-years-old. In this film, aside from the live action scenes, I have used an abstract environment and animation to externalize and visualize the pressure, and the feeling of isolation, depression, and helplessness that I had as a single woman. Semiotics are involved to analyze the signifiers and signified in this film. I have also used subtext through characters’ words, actions, backstories and costuming to communicate my memory of emotional pressure - many visualized by animation. This paper will also trace the influences from other films on Meat and discuss the development of animation technology, which helped me to create this film. The political background, gender stereotypes, social context, and traditional cultural impact of sheng nu, as well as my academic insights on the sheng nu phenomena have been illustrated in Meat and will be outlined in this paper. Theories of propaganda and gender are particularly useful in analyzing the sheng nu phenomenon. Through the creation of this project, I have made many unexpected discoveries, which have helped me to achieve academic, emotional, and artistic growth. When I was twenty-five-years-old, I suffered pressure from my family and friends as a single woman. I didn’t understand what had gone wrong but the differences between me and the women my age, who had already married and had babies, my family’s concerns, and the outside judgments – all made me feel very confused, anxious and depressed. In that period, to help me solve the “problem of being single”, I was forced to endure four blind dates arranged by my mother. My mother gave her relatives and friends my personal information such as age, height, job, and family background, and asked them to pass it on to the single men whom they knew 1 were looking for a woman to marry. Based on this general information, the single men evaluated whether I could be an ideal wife for them in the future, and decided whether or not to date me. The process of setting up a blind date always made me feel I was a product on a grocery shelf. This personal experience gave me the main idea for my film Meat: in China, a single woman is just like a product, a piece of meat, without dignity, displayed in the market for potential buyers. After I came to Canada, my close friend Jia Hou, who is the same age as me and still single, has continued to suffer judgments and pressures as a single woman. Jia would call me from China and tell me the terrible experiences that she was having with her family and the people around her because of her single status. After I “escaped” being a single woman (by getting married and leaving China) and left the pressure of my family behind, I found my inner peace again. With the theories of gender and propaganda that I have learned in my graduate studies, I can finally understand the roots of my frustration